I feel sorry for Sebastian Faulks this week, just a little bit. Having given over only six weeks of his life (he says) to what must have been the rather jolly undertaking of turning out the rompy Devil May Care, I can't imagine that he will be exactly prostrated with grief to learn that some of the most dedicated fans of Mr Bond are taking to the streets - or, at least, the internet - to express their outrage at what they perceive to be Faulks' not totally accurate portrayal of our nation's most loved spy.

It is an accusation that would have been levelled at anyone daring to take on the task. Amongst the multitude of gripes quoted in the Times, one disgruntled reader complains that "Bond would never have been so familiar and flippant with M as he is in this book" while several others express chagrin at Bond playing tennis, apparently not even swayed by the opportunity it will present for the actor in the film version to wear very tight white shorts.

The complaint that Faulks did not truly write "as Fleming" is perhaps a little hollow. But the passion of these unhappy spy-novel aficionados made me wonder if it is possible to identify the point at which ownership over characters and even stories pass from the author to the reading audience. This sort of indignant response is not uncommon, as JK Rowling and Geraldine McCaughrean could testify.

There is something quite particular about the nature of the characters that evoke this kind of reader-ownership. The sheer longevity of Bond makes him feel more of a familiar old friend than a character that appears in a one-off novel. Though a reader might be inclined to speculate what happened to, for instance, Scout Finch following the conclusion of To Kill A Mockingbird, she's been left forever at primary school age.

The books must also be accessible - even populist. This explains the apparent lack of public outcry directed towards Proust about the consistency of his depictions of Albertine. It's when the reader feels that he could write the book himself, if only he had the time or inclination, that it gets this personal.

It must be galling to have a reader inform you that you have got something that you made up in the first place wrong. I can even see how it might make an author want to take this sort of person to court. But the sense that readers know better than authors is hardly unnatural. The desire to gain a certain degree of purchase on characters and narratives goes back to oral storytelling, when audiences had the agency to tweak stories as they liked. In a way, are not the people who are now churning out online fan fiction simply acting on the same archetypal urge that inspired ancient oratory poets, albeit sometimes with not quite as much talent?

I am not really a novelist, so it is likely I'll never know how it feels to have my characters bossed around by people other than me. But I can't help but think that if they were I'd feel a little bit chuffed. Isn't the kind of fan response that Faulks has evoked just confirmation of the fact that Bond remains a vital, and passionately loved character? Just as no publicity is bad publicity, eliciting this kind of rage from readers can only mean that an author has thoroughly affected his or her readership's psyche - in other words that, as a writer of fiction, you've properly arrived.